Sunday, February 28, 2010

A few hundred souls


Who cares for a few hundred ordinary souls…
Let them die in the rain…
Or, drown in the salt of their own tears…
While we worry about pride

Who knows…who lives or dies?
Who cares and who decides??
Oh, let them die in the gutters or blow up in a bomb
What is the matter with a few hundred ordinary souls…

Teeming ants, blocking every highway
Extermination is the solution anyway…
So, don’t bother let them be ignored…
It’s just a few hundred ordinary souls.

The rape of human dignity
And the friendly gun,
And, hate….
And, we all condemn it sipping coffee with cakes

It’s pointless to point out
In a land of billions
We will be insulted and torn apart… Yet, we will watch..
As, it’s not just a few hundred…all our souls are dead anyway.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Violence and Valentines

On a day leading to violets and valentines
On a night waiting for dawn to celebrate love…
And, a peaceful city celebrating life
Shattered due to violence and vendetta

The tremulous rose is silenced
As, I watch the rain in her eyes…
And, we all are aghast
While love seems to be full of lies

Time again for blames…
Time again for blood to be mopped up from the streets
Time again maybe to rise up…
To be beaten down again??

The scars of undeserved deaths
The blinding pain of open wounds…
While we wait for rain to embrace us
And, stand up demanding a change

The pen seems an unworthy weapon
But, the feeble words are all I have
While the anger boils in a billion minds…
And, my country is ravaged again…

Yet, tomorrow is a new day of an emerging country
The promise of a young nation
A promise of love…And a resolve…
To fly no matter what the odds…

Monday, January 25, 2010

Dawn


I hear a faraway melancholy ajaan
While sitting alone at a lonely night’s dawn…
Hearing, the quaint out of tune melody
And, the peace of a centuries old song…

An un-understood beauty beckons…
While the solitary sailor looks on…
The lighthouse beacon sweeps by again…
Yet, the rocks seem to summon…

She wanders in another land….
While I seek the out of tune melody
And, I succumb all over again…
To a rustic tune that moved mountains…

I have lost many…
To the calling of darkness
I have lost myself in your song…
And you will find me when the lights go off

She will kill to win
While I fight to surrender
And, I wait while the lonely ajaan cleanses me
And, music rushes through my veins…

The threshold of tomorrow
Unfolds with un-foretold beauty
And, I watch spellbound…
While far, far away…She sleeps in peace

Monday, January 4, 2010

Fog


The silent evening…
Stealthily arrives in the dark domain
Of a foggy winter’s dawn
While, life blunders on…

The blinding pain…
Of losing after having found again
Of seeing it all slip away
Down the same road of old rain

And, yet the maddening hope
Lingers on in the musty cellars
Of the torn down mansion
Full of old cares…

She says it’s all there…
Behind, the smoke somewhere
Yet, she throws me away
Revolted at the sight of my rotting wounds

And, my vain vigil continues…
Staring at the silent phone
Burning down another night
Waiting, to be understood.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Rat Race


Tomorrow will be yesterday again…
As, the sun rides low on the horizon
Silent witness of eternity…
Of what once was and never will be

And, we are quiet…
Forgetting the songs of silence
Violent in our devotion…
To false neon gods

We are all drunk…
Trying to find meaning in our self-created complications
And, we are all in mourning…
For, that which quietly died without us noticing

Yet, we shall kill some more
Ride on… Forward O’ soldier…
Success calls…and that elusive class…
While, the graveyard stands silent waiting for us to extinguish

Few madmen will keep writing…
And, some songs will be hidden deep within your breasts
While we run on in a trance…
On and on…over the edge…

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Rain Messenger's Diary 12...Letter to Annie

Dear Annie,
I am not sure who you are or even, why I am writing this letter to you. The things that am going to tell you today may not even make sense to you. You are liable to think am crazy yet I want to tell you all this. Maybe, there are a few things that remain unsaid like a quiet veil around our lives. Or, maybe it’s just that I miss the habit of sharing my thoughts with someone like I once used to with a person sitting on a certain bench staring at clouds, broken stairways and rain…
I am not sure whether you will ever get to read this letter, for I do not know where or whom to send it to. So, I will just float it in the wind and maybe, it will find its way to you in the end. Things always do come home, you know, no matter how long it takes.
It’s been a while since I last wrote to you, so I am a bit rusty and I do not even know what to say. You know, they say, that life comes round in a complete circle, but what I like to believe is that it shapes up in mysterious ways, kind of like the random shapes the rocks get under the constant battering of the sea. They are all different, unintentionally shaped over hundreds of years, yet they all fit in as if they were all meant to be there.
There is always this dilemma when I write to you, a tug-of-war between whether to apologise for reasons I do not understand or tell you that none of it was my fault. I have come to learn that it is a bit of both.
It, however, suffices to say that you changed my life, maybe even saved it. It suffices to say that am sorry that my love was not strong enough to keep even God from pulling you away. Yet, there is this guitar and every tune I play reminds me of a certain balcony where you used to sing to me.
By now, perhaps you are wondering what the whole point is behind this meandering letter. As, I said, I do not know and when I post it today in the air of a virtual world, it will be a message and a prayer. A message that my yesterdays are still a part of my tomorrows but, that am slowly learning to choose between them and there soon maybe a day when I will choose my tomorrow free of my yesterday. It is a message that, when that day comes, it will not be an insult or me forgetting something, it will simply be me embracing sunrise again.
And, it is a prayer that you find peace with this letter and love. A love that can keep you safe and calm the tumultuous wind that keeps shattering things within us. It is a prayer that when you gaze into the horizon at the sunset, all you think of is that if the sunset is that beautiful, how beautiful the sunrise is going to be.

With all my love,
rain messenger

Thursday, November 12, 2009

The Widow


The surreal fogs are back…
Her mind feels while waiting in her lonely balcony
She feels nothing…the mind cannot reach her…
She waits…grasping the railing…her knuckles white

She knows she has faltered…
Grasped by a sudden fear…
Of a dark winter… Of snow…
And, a dead body frozen in the cold…

She waits…knowing she will jump…
She knows, he watches
Silently…mockingly…the perpetual cigarette on his lips…
She knows he is dead and that, she betrayed him…

She wanted to leave him…
Having found love at a crossroad…
Yet, he didn’t give her a chance
He died…binding her to him…forever

And, she shivers…
Yet, she doesn’t feel the cold
And she thinks of the red saree…
And the missing vermillion on her head…

She waits…knuckles white…
Staring out…as the fog engulfs her…
And, a lonely poem…lost in the jungle…
Calls her…while she waits…knowing he waits too…